This Is How Walmart Beats Amazon

A scenario from the future

In my last post I imagined a world in which large data-driven platforms like Amazon, Google, Spotify, and Uber are compelled to share machine-readable copies of data to their users. There are literally scores, if not hundreds of wrinkles to iron out around how such a system would work, and in a future post I hope to dig into some of those questions. But for now, come with me on a journey into the future, where the wrinkles have been ironed out, and a new marketplace of personally-driven information is flourishing. We’ll return to one of the primary examples I sketched out in the aforementioned post: A battle for the allegiance – and pocketbook – of one online shopper, in this case, my wife Michelle.

***

It’s a crisp winter mid morning in Manhattan when the doorbell rings. Michelle looks up from her laptop, wondering who it might be. She’s not expecting any deliveries from Amazon, usually the source of such interruptions. She glances at her phone, and the Ring app (an Amazon service, naturally) shows a well dressed, smiling young woman at the door. She’s holding what looks like an elegantly wrapped gift in her hands. Now that’s unusual! Michelle checks the date – no anniversaries, no birthdays, no special occasions – so what gives?

Michelle opens the door and is greeted by a woman who introduces herself as Sheila. She tells Michelle she’s been sent over by Walmart. Walmart? Michelle’s never set foot in a Walmart store, and has a less than charitable view of the company overall. Why on earth would Walmart be sending her a special delivery gift box?

Sheila is used to exactly this kind of response – she’s been trained to expect it, and to manage the conversation that ensues. Sheila is a college-educated Walmart management associate, and delivering these gift boxes is a mandatory part of her company training. In fact, Sheila’s future career trajectory is based, in part, on her success at converting Michelle into becoming a Walmart customer, and she’s learned from her colleagues back at corporate that the best way to succeed is to be direct and open while engaging with a top-level prospect.

“Michelle, I know this seems a bit strange, but Walmart has identified you as a premier ecommerce customer – I’m guessing you probably have at least three or four packages a week delivered here?”

“More like three or four a day,” Michelle answers, warming to Sheila’s implied status as a premium customer.

“Yes, it’s amazing how it’s become a daily habit,” Sheila answers. “And as you probably know, Walmart has an online service, but truth be told, we never seem to get the business of folks like you. I’m here to see if we might change that.”

Michelle becomes suspicious. It doesn’t make sense to her – sending over a manager bearing gifts? Such tactics don’t scale – and feel like an intrusion to boot.

Sensing this, Sheila continues. “Look, I’m not here to sell you anything. I’ve got this special gift for you from Doug McMillon, the CEO of Walmart. You’ve been selected to be part of a new program we’re testing – we call it Walton’s Circle. It’s named after Sam Walton, our founder, who was pretty fond of the personal touch. In any case, the gift is yours to keep. There’s some pretty cool stuff in there, I have to say, including La Mer skin cream and some Neuhaus chocolate that’s to die for.”

Michelle smiles. Strange how the world’s biggest retailer, a place she’s never shopped, seems to know her brand preferences for skin care and chocolate. Despite herself, she relaxes a bit.

“Also inside,” Sheila continues, “is an invitation. It’s entirely up to you if you want to accept it, but let me explain?”

“Sure,” Michelle answers.

“Great. Have you heard of the Token Act?”

Michelle frowns. She read about this new piece of legislation, something to do with personal data and the right to exchange it for value across the internet. In the run up to its passage, her husband wouldn’t shut up about how revolutionary it was going to be, but so far nothing important in her life had changed.

“Yeah, I hear that all the time,” Sheila responds. “But that’s where our invitation comes in. Inside the box is an envelope with a code and a website. I imagine you use Amazon…” Sheila glances toward an empty brown box in the hallway with Amazon’s universal smiling logo. Michelle laughs. “Of course you do! I was a huge Amazon customer for years. And that’s what our invitation is about – it’s an invitation to see what might happen if you became a Walmart customer instead. If you go to our site and enter your code, a program will automatically download your Amazon purchase history and run it through Walmart’s historical inventory. Within seconds, you’ll be given a report detailing what you would have saved had you purchased exactly the same products, at the same time, from us instead of Jeff Bezos.”

“Huh,” Michelle responds. “Sounds cool but…that’s my information on Amazon, no? I don’t want you to have that, do I?”

“Of course not,” Sheila says knowingly. “All of your information is protected by LiveRamp Identity, and is never stored or even processed on our servers. You maintain complete control over the process, and can revoke it at any time.”

Michelle had heard of LiveRamp Identity, it was a third-party guarantor of information safety she’d used for a recent mortgage application. She also came across it when co-signing for a car loan for her college-aged daughter.

“When you put that code into our site, a token is generated that gives us permission to compare our data to yours, and a report is generated,” Sheila explained. “The report is yours to keep and do with what you want. In fact, the report becomes a token in and of itself, and you can submit that token to third party services like TokenTrust, which will audit our work and tell you if our results can be trusted.”

TokenTrust was another service Michelle had heard of, her husband had raved about it as one of the fastest growing new entrants in the tech industry. The company had recently been featured on 60 Minutes – it played a significant role in a story about Google’s search results, if she recalled correctly. Docusign had purchased the company for several billion just last year. In any case, Michelle’s suspicions were defused – may as well check this out. I mean, why would Walmart risk its reputation stealing her Amazon data? It was worth at least seeing that report.

Sheila sensed the opening. “The reports are pretty amazing,” she says. “I’ve had clients who’ve discovered they could have saved thousands of dollars a year. And here’s the best part: If, after reviewing and validating the report, you switch to Walmart, we’ll credit your account with those savings – in essence, we’ll retroactively deliver you the savings you would have had all along.”

“Wow. That almost sounds too good to be true!” Michelle says. “But… OK, thanks. I’ll check it out. Thanks for coming by.”

Michelle heads back inside and places the gift box on the table next to her laptop. Before opening the box, she wants to be sure this thing is for real. She Googles “Walmart Walton Circle Savings Token” – and the first link is to a Business Insider article: “These Lucky Few Amazon Customers Are Paid Thousands to Switch – By Walmart.” So Sheila wasn’t lying – this program is for real!

Michelle tugs on the satin ribbon surrounding her gift box and raises its sturdy lid. Nestled on straw inside are two jars of La Mer, several samples of Neuhaus chocolates, two of her favorite bath salts, and various high end household items. The inside lid of the box proclaims “Welcome to Walton’s Circle!” in elegant script. At the center of the box is an creamy envelope engraved with her name. Michelle opens it, and just as Sheila mentioned, a URL and code is included, along with simple instructions.

What the hell, may as well see what comes of it. Turning to her laptop, Michelle heads to Walmart.com – for the first time in her life – and enters her code. Almost instantaneously a dialog pops up, informing her that her report is ready. Would she like to review it?

Why not?! Michelle clicks “Yes” and up comes a side-by-side comparison of her entire Amazon purchase history. She notices that during the early years – roughly until 2006 – there’s not much on the Walmart side of the report. But after that the match rates start to climb, and for the past five or so years, the report shows that 98 percent of the stuff she’s bought at Amazon was also available on Walmart.com. Each purchase has a link, and she tries out one – a chaise lounge she purchased in 2014 (gotta love Prime shipping!). Turns out Walmart didn’t have that exact match, but the report shows several similar alternatives, any of which would have worked. Cool.

Michelle’s eye is drawn to the bottom of the report, to a large sum in red that shows the difference in price between her Amazon purchases and their Walmart doppelgangers.

$2,700.

Holy….cow. Michelle can’t believe it. Is this for real? Anticipating the question, Walmart’s report software pops up a dialog. “Would you like to validate your token’s report using TokenTrust? We’ll pay all fees.” Michelle clicks yes, and a TokenTrust site appears. The site shows a “working” icon for several seconds, then returns a simple message: “TokenTrust has reviewed Walmarts claims and your Amazon token, and validates the accuracy of this report.”

Michelle is sold. Next to the $2700 figure at the bottom of her report is one line of text, and a “Go” link. “Would you like to become a founding member of the Walton Circle? We’ll take care of all your transition needs, and Sheila, who’ve you already met, will be named as your personal shopping concierge.”

Michelle hovers momentarily over “Go.” What the hell, she thinks. I can always switch back. And with one click, Michelle does something she never thought she would: She becomes a Walmart customer.

Satisfied, she turns her eyes back to her work. Several new emails have collected in her inbox. One is from Doug McMillon, welcoming her to Walton’s Circle. As she hovers over it, mail refreshes, and a new message piles on top of McMillon’s.

Holy shit. Did Jeff Bezos really just email me?!

***

Is such a scenario even possible? Well, that question remains unexplored, at least for now. As I wrote in my last post, I’m not certain Amazon’s terms of service would allow for such an information exchange, though it’s currently possible to download exactly the information Walmart would need to stand up such a service. (I’ve done it, it takes a bit of poking around, but it’s very cool to see.) The real question is this: Would Walmart spend the thousands of dollars required to make this kind of customer acquisition possible?

I don’t see why not. A high end e-commerce customer spends more than ten thousand dollars a year online. Over a lifetime, this customer is worth thousands of dollars in profit for a well-run commerce site like Walmart. The most difficult and expensive problem for any brand is switching costs – it’s at the core of the most sophisticated marketing efforts in the world – Ford spends hundreds of millions each year trying to convince customers to switch from GM, Verizon spends equal amounts in an effort to pull customers from AT&T. Over the past five years, Walmart has watched Amazon run away with its customers online, even as it has spent billions building a competitive commerce offering. What Walmart needs are “point to” customers – the kind of people who not only become profitable lifelong buyers, but who will tell hundreds of friends, family members and colleagues about their gift box experience.

But to get there, Walmart needs that Amazon token. Wouldn’t it be cool if such a thing actually existed?